TSG 264 Announcement

[vadalaz]

Welcome to Civilization 5 Game of the Month - GOTM #264
These games allow new and old GOTM fans to play Civ 5 in a friendly competitive environment. Each game will specify the Civ you will play and the Victory Condition to strive for.

How to play:
1) Download the savefile, then place it in the Saves\single folder. The default paths are:
Windows: ...\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\Saves\single\
Mac: ~/Documents/Aspyr/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/Saves/single/ or ~/Library/Application Support/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/Saves/single/
2) On the turn of your victory (or defeat), use the "lemme play one more turn" feature and save the game
3) Upload your savefile here

Where to discuss the game:
1) Announcement (this thread) - pre-game thoughts and questions
2) Opening actions - the first 100 turns
3) After actions - post-game discussion and feedback

Game Settings:

Player (You): Boudicca - The Celts
Victory Condition: Science (but all VCs are enabled)
Difficulty: Settler
Map Type/Size: British Isles/Standard (8 Civs, 16 City-States)
Pace: Standard

The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker.

Your Unique Characteristics:
UA: Druidic Lore: +1 faith per city with an adjacent unimproved forest. Bonus increases to +2 faith in cities with 3 or more adjacent unimproved forest tiles
UU: Pictish Warrior: Replaces the Spearman. No movement cost to pillage, +20% combat strength outside friendly territory (kept on upgrade). Earns 50% of opponents' combat strength as faith from kills (lost on upgrade). No combat bonus vs mounted units (but regains it when upgraded to Pikeman)
UB: Ceilidh Hall: Replaces the Opera House. Provides +3 happiness

Required DLC: All DLC
Starting Era: Ancient
Required game options: None
Enabled game options: None (You may turn on/off Quick Combat/Quick Movement using the game options menu at any time during gameplay.)
Game Version: This game was created in Civ5 Brave New World version 1.0.3.279

MUST READ!

Our most sacred rule: Do not replay any turns!
If you make a mistake, accept it, and try to recover through game-play. To ensure fair play and prevent results exclusions, please set your Autosaves to "1 turn". In the event of a computer crash while playing, just reload to the previous autosave, then play on the same way you played it the first time. Please let Leif or me know (either in the forums or through Private Message) if you experienced a crash and how many turns you replayed.

This game runs through April 2nd 2025

@The_J
@Blake00

 

[vadalaz]

British Isles in-game description: Great Britain, Ireland, and countless smaller islands

This is a resource-rich map that's part of the Explorers Map Pack DLC. It has preset landmass shapes and terrain types (grassland, marsh etc.), but the resources are different every time. It appears that ruins can spawn closer than on regular maps: I did not add those ruins on the starting screenshot.

Settler difficulty is special, because you can get Settlers and Workers from ancient ruins. The full list of player bonuses for Settler difficulty can be found here; the short version is that techs and policies are cheap, maintenance costs low, and happiness seemingly endless.

 

[sebtanic]

So I'd have settled on the Gold anyway, but the Celtic UA pretty much makes it mandatory since it's the only forest in sight.

Guess we can skip the shrine this game...

 

[raider980]

Yep start on the gold 100%. I like the sound of unlimited happiness. Think I’ll try and build as many cities as possible without a worry in the world.

 

[qontroL]

I've never played on Settler difficulty before, but I went to look at the list that was posted and apparently Barbarians can't enter player land. That's hilarious.

I guess this is the ultimate sim-city game. I am absolutely terrible at this, so I'm ready to mess it up entirely! Should be fun.

 

[sebtanic]

build

bad thing about city spamming is it slows down your science though... but i will probably try it anyway

 

[Ecocrexis]

Just joined and this looks like fun.
Never played on settler difficulty before so this should be easy

 

[pietro1990]

why settler difficulty? Isn't it to have a challenge why not at least pricne or king difficulty?

 

[qontroL]

why settler difficulty? Isn't it to have a challenge why not at least pricne or king difficulty?

instead of being a challenge against the game you can see it as a challenge against each other

 

[leif erikson]

Just joined and this looks like fun.
Never played on settler difficulty before so this should be easy

Welcome to CivFanatics and Game of the Month!
Best of luck in your game.

 

[Nizef]

why settler difficulty? Isn't it to have a challenge why not at least pricne or king difficulty?

@vadalaz, myself and the rest of the GotM team try to show as many sides of the game as possible. Last year we had the first ever GotM on Marathon speed, just to mention another way of playing the game. I am pretty sure many players had no idea that you can get settlers from ruins on Settler difficulty. Having said this, our next game will be on Prince difficulty (kind of "skipping" Chieftain and Warlord). If you have some ideas that you would like to see in GotM, you are welcome to contact either @vadalaz or me.

 

[pietro1990]

@vadalaz, myself and the rest of the GotM team try to show as many sides of the game as possible. Last year we had the first ever GotM on Marathon speed, just to mention another way of playing the game. I am pretty sure many players had no idea that you can get settlers from ruins on Settler difficulty. Having said this, our next game will be on Prince difficulty (kind of "skipping" Chieftain and Warlord). If you have some ideas that you would like to see in GotM, you are welcome to contact either @vadalaz or me.

So its bassicly who is doing the fastes victory? what are the rules and how do i sign up?

 

[pietro1990]

Yep start on the gold 100%. I like the sound of unlimited happiness. Think I’ll try and build as many cities as possible without a worry in the world.

Probably just 4 is enough

 

[qontroL]

So its bassicly who is doing the fastes victory? what are the rules and how do i sign up?

it's all in the first post my friend

 

[pietro1990]

it's all in the first post my friend

edit sorry i was asking when to finsih but again this was in the post

 

[Zlither]

why settler difficulty? Isn't it to have a challenge why not at least pricne or king difficulty?

Fun things can happen .. look at the science victory times for Shoshone on Settler - best is turn 147 on standard speed.This is almost 1 tech per 2 turns!
Poland is almost as good.
See this ad-hoc query (warning - can be very slow to load) for the best entries.
The best times are for highlands maps as Shoshone have a strong scout that can explore quicker and that can pick their goodie hut reward.. and get many free settlers, early religion, culture and workers ... but workers can be had other ways.... see below.

Tips:

For good times on this challenge, probably are going to want food, food and more food - including internal trade routes as soon as you can. Coastal routes provide 2x food.
And .. if your cities are close enough then barbarians cant pillage them! Creative tile buying or unit placement can help with this.
Number of cities before National College is a real tradeoff.
On settler you can usually fill, or come close to, two trees before rationalism.
One can steal other settlers for workers .. then wait until they have a second city and they'll happily give you all their gold instead of the city they offer (assuming you have any military at all) - obviously a little harder on an island map. Do this even if you cant steal a worker / settler, just for the gold. Consider doing it to every opponent. They will almost never have gold later on, so do not expect to sell luxs.

(For HoF games, pick opponents that dont explore much or dont do well on lower levels - and usually not Venice or Austria; also consider Sea Level, Temp, and World Age options.
Also, for an island HoF map, you'd probably not want any naval civs.
And you'd probably roll for a map where Sun God makes sense.)

The 1 tech/2 turns implies that to truly optimize this you'll want to study how science overflow works, especially when popping great scientists -search forums.

 

[Zlither]

Fun things can happen .. look at the science victory times for Shoshone on Settler - best is turn 147 on standard speed.This is almost 1 tech per 2 turns!
Poland is almost as good.
See this ad-hoc query (warning - can be very slow to load) for the best entries.
The best times are for highlands maps as Shoshone have a strong scout that can explore quicker and that can pick their goodie hut reward.. and get many free settlers, early religion, culture and workers ... but workers can be had other ways.... see below.

Tips:

For good times on this challenge, probably are going to want food, food and more food - including internal trade routes as soon as you can. Coastal routes provide 2x food.
And .. if your cities are close enough then barbarians cant pillage them! Creative tile buying or unit placement can help with this.
Number of cities before National College is a real tradeoff.
On settler you can usually fill, or come close to, two trees before rationalism.
One can steal other settlers for workers .. then wait until they have a second city and they'll happily give you all their gold instead of the city they offer (assuming you have any military at all) - obviously a little harder on an island map. Do this even if you cant steal a worker / settler, just for the gold. Consider doing it to every opponent. They will almost never have gold later on, so do not expect to sell luxs.

(For HoF games, pick opponents that dont explore much or dont do well on lower levels - and usually not Venice or Austria; also consider Sea Level, Temp, and World Age options.
Also, for an island HoF map, you'd probably not want any naval civs.
And you'd probably roll for a map where Sun God makes sense.)

The 1 tech/2 turns implies that to truly optimize this you'll want to study how science overflow works, especially when popping great scientists -search forums.

In case I scared anyone off, apologies! For this game, i'd expect a better play than myself to do it in about 1tech every 2.75-3 turns (as not shoshone/poland, and starting position)

Sometimes it is better to delay culture (amphitheater, ...) so as to not get too many policies before Rationalism/Ideology, so that those policies are cheaper.
Saving (most) of your great scientists until the end and bulbing many of the late techs is probably best, but you have to start at the right time. For this reason, a single practice game on a similar map might really help.
There's a decent chance that ~3/4 of the way to near the end you'll set some cities to: [1] pure science then later [2] pure $, so production is important.
Dont be surprised if you end the game at ~~ 100 happiness, even with no happiness buildings.

Another cheap trick: if you are about to lose a race to a goody hut, but you are in "front" of them, just declare war! Then they can't pass through you. And on this level, that goody hut could be a free settler.

 

[elotar]

Got no idea what is the best approach for settler difficulty. Will roll with wherever feels right!